defaults.vim was and still is an abject idea that we sadly can't get rid off, now that it has been there for a few years.

The least desirable property of defaults.vim is also present in sensible or in system-wide vimrcs written by package maintainers: you get a black box where things are added/changed/removed without your knowledge or consent. "Your" so-called minimal setup is going to evolve over time, but not according to "your" needs.

We got so many support request related to that silly mechanism that's not even funny.

Same here. Vim's new "default" to tie middle-click paste to vim's buffer rather than the X selection drives me up the wall, every time. It's not just that I have multiple machines to administer, it's that there's multiple users (roles) to configure separate things. And for every user my default workflow is now broken.

I've given up on vim. I'm now teaching myself Emacs on my own machine, and replace vim with neovim everywhere I can.

Every time I use vim on server that doesn't have my .vimrc file that I copy around I inevitably end up googleing "disable mouse in vim"

:set mouse=''

Looks like you should look it up, too.

I took a second to see who the "we" is in your last sentence. The site vimways.org is unusable because its certificate has expired.

Also, amen. Having used vi since before vim, I actually have a few settings to restore vi features and quirks that I like ( cpoptions+=vxZ!$- ).

Yeah, I know about the certificate issue but the person who can fix that appears to be unreachable. I hope it will be settled soon.